This week in State of the Game we'll be covering the second-to-last week in January. Overall the upward trend in the top level stats continues with the number of releases and average players in them increased over the week before. Average hours are down however although through no fault of most of the top titles. Indeed this week's top 5 command some impressive stats, most notably the lowest average unplayed I've seen in quite some time.

The trending section is especially interesting this week as the majority of the top 5 aren't there due to sales. Dead Effect 2, even despite the controversy around the developer potentially blacklisting "very negative" reviewers, takes the top spot thanks to a 70% off sale. At the same time, however, it's also been released on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, likely boosting it even further with the extra publicity and exposure. Atlas Reactor and The Culling both made the cut with big updates showing that both F2P and paid titles can benefit from content injections every now and then. Whilst Evoland IItechnically wasn't on sale it was available as part of one of the Humble Bundles for the low price of $1. Lastly, the forever early-access title of Overgrowth nips in with the odd discount of 27%. It's also now finally in beta, so a final release might finally be on the cards for it almost 9 years after it was available for Pre-Order in October 2008.

We're fast approaching the time when the AAA devs start to come out of their winter slumber and start debuting the new year's first titles. There's little doubt that next week's stats will likely be dominated by Resident Evil 7: Biohazard but it will be interesting to see what others manage to stand out from the crowd. Are there any little gems you've been playing that you think might make the cut?